Definition

Not every digital marketing campaign is automatically an online marketing effort.

According to TNMedia, online marketing is “…any tool, strategy or method of getting the company name out to the public. The advertisements can take many different forms and some strategies focus on subtle messages rather than clear-cut advertisements.”

Want the drop-dead simple version of it?

Online marketing is any effort to spread the word about your company that uses the Internet to reach people.

Basically, it’s anything that you do online to get more eyeballs on you, grab people’s attention, and hopefully, at some point, get them to buy from you.

There are seven major sub-categories of online marketing that I want to cover in this guide.

Overview

Next to SEO, there’s search engine marketing (SEM), which is simply the paid version of SEO.

Marketers pay Google to display ads in their search results in the hopes that they will drive traffic (especially interested people, or leads) to their product landing pages.

Then there’s content marketing. This is where marketers try to create valuable media and content to distribute to potential future customers. This is the good guy version of online marketing where you mostly try to guilt people into buying.

Of course, you already know social media marketing, which is where you use one or several social media channels to engage with customers, build relationships, and then send them to your products and services.

Pay per click advertising (or PPC) is similar to search engine marketing, but it isn’t limited to Google and its competitors. Most social media networks let you create ads that integrate naturally into their feeds, allowing you to pay for clicks to your website.

Affiliate marketing is a kind of referral marketing where you share profits with fellow marketers in exchange for promoting each other’s products.

And finally, there’s email marketing, which some already consider old-school. But it’s still one of the most effective channels. Once your customers have given you permission to contact them, you can email them at any time, providing value and asking them to buy when the time is right.

You can already guess how big online marketing really is. You know how huge of a space each of these individual categories fill.

I mean, just think about how many social media platforms you can name off the top of your head:

Brian Dean, aka Backlinko, might be flying under the radar. But when you start Googling around and learning SEO, you’re bound to bump into him.

He outranks huge sites like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Copyblogger, and he completely dominates the SEO space with his super long case studies that provide actionable, step-by-step instructions for upping your SEO game.

Backlinko ranks #1 AND #2 for “how to get backlinks.”

What’s great about his blog is that instead of just rounding up SEO news like Search Engine Land and others do, he actually shows you how to implement good SEO techniques that work.

As I outlined in one of the previous guides in this series, SEO is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.

Brian is one of the best sources on the web for you to learn how to do search engine marketing right.

Within search engine optimization, there are two big sectors to be aware of:

On-page and off-page SEO. Let’s dive into each.

On-Page SEO

Over the past few years, Google has made numerous updates to their algorithms.

Data tells us that Google makes up to 600 changes to their algorithm every single year.

It’s almost impossible to keep up with Google’s rapid pace and changing user behavior.

But one thing that’s remained relatively constant is conducting on-page SEO.

Most on-page activities for SEO aren’t linked to direct ranking factors, but rather to indirect factors like click-through rate and time on site.

For example, an on-page SEO task that’s common is to optimize your meta description and title tag:

Your title tag and meta description are what shows up on a given Google search result. For example, if someone searches for “SEO Tips,” my post will show up with the headline and description that I’ve personally customized.

While placing keywords in the title and description can help users navigate the content faster (as seen by the bolded text), it doesn’t directly increase rankings.

So simply stuffing keywords in your meta and title tags isn’t an option.

But they do contribute to click-through rate. When your title tags and meta descriptions are more compelling or related to the topic that someone is searching for, you can expect higher click-through rates.

And the higher the CTR, the higher the chance of ranking better.

Google is all about providing the best user experience possible. So if Google notices that your post that ranks at #10 is getting a higher CTR than the post above you, they will move your content up.

On-page SEO consists of a few major elements to be aware of:

Crawl errors

Keyword research

Page optimization

Speed

In this section, I’ll walk you through how you can improve each of these elements to get your on-page SEO on the right track.

Crawl errors

Crawl errors can be anything from a 404 error (broken link) to duplicate content. And all of these issues can plague your website with:

Slow speeds

Impacted rankings

Penalties from Google

Increased risk of users leaving your site (bouncing)

If you’ve ever seen this on your site, it’s a broken link error that can cause major problems:

For example, 404 errors can impact your traffic heavily if another external source is linking to them.

If you’ve gotten your content featured on another site, but the link is broken, you’re losing out on tons of traffic.

One of the fastest tools to fix crawl errors that could be harming your site is Screaming Frog.

It’s a technical SEO tool that can scan your website for free, telling you detailed information on what you need to fix and how to do it:

When scanning your site, be sure to look for common problem areas like:

Duplicate or missing content

404 errors

These issues are all too common on the majority of sites.

Keyword research

Keyword research is a fundamental process in any online marketing game plan for SEO.

Keywords are what you search in a search engine to find the content you are looking for.

For example, type “SEO Guide” into Google — that would be a keyword. And pages can target these keywords to compete in the rankings.

There are a few types of keywords to be aware of before conducting a basic keyword research strategy. There are two major kinds:

Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer keywords made up of 3-5+ words. They are often easier to target due to specificity, less traffic, and less competition.

Head keywords: Head or short-tail keywords are one-word or two-word keywords that are more general. For example, “basketball shoes” would be a competitive head keyword.

A good SEO strategy will target a mixture of both of these kinds of terms.

Short-tail keywords will be much more competitive because they are more general (and therefore have a higher volume).

On the other hand, long-tail keywords will get you less traffic but will convert better:

Simply start by entering the basic topic that you want to cover for your next post or page:

Searching for your basic keyword will give you a list of metrics telling you the volume (how many searches per month), difficulty (competition ranking for it), and the number of clicks that come from organic search.

Lastly, it will also give you keyword suggestions.

Generally speaking, when looking to target keywords for your next blog post, you want to find long-tail terms with higher volumes and lower difficulty scores.

Then, you can take that keyword and follow the next steps under page optimization!

Page optimization

Page optimization is a critical step in the process of SEO. Page optimization involves doing a few basic tasks to optimize your page for specific keywords and for search engines.

Remember: You’re writing content and optimizing pages for both the user and the search engine.

Everything from URLs to internal links can have an impact on your page performance.

This on-page SEO checklist from Backlinko is one of my favorite ways to stay on top of every new blog post that I write:

All of these factors help you to both add context to the page for Google and structure it in a friendly way for the user.

For example, when you search for an article on Google, you expect to get something similar to your search:

Everything from the permalink (URL) to the title and structure of your post (h1 and h2 headings) makes a difference in how Google scans your content and how user-friendly it is.

The better on-page optimization you have, the longer users will stay around to consume your content.

Plus, optimizing things like internal links (where you link to another article on your site from a new post) will help you drive users throughout your entire site.

Always be sure to follow the on-page SEO cheat sheet above when you write new blog posts.

Improve your page speed

One of the biggest factors for success is improving the speed at which your page loads.

When it comes to SEO, you want your content to load fast. Google prefers websites that load fast as well.

Off-Page SEO

That means that it’s all of the factors and activities that you can do (off-page) to raise the ranking of your site on search engines.

There are a few major ways that off-page SEO comes into play. Everything from link building to social promotion and content syndication can improve your off-page SEO.

Even things like guest blogging or writing a promotional piece on another site can result in a link (i.e., off-page SEO).

Here are a few ways to rank higher with off-page SEO.

Link building is critical

Link building is the most important factor in any off-page SEO strategy. According to a video from 2016 featuring Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, links and content were tied as the top two ranking factors.

Google confirmed this official video. Links are one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking in a given search result.

When Brian Dean of Backlinko tested this with his own study, he found that the sites that rank number one dominate the competition in terms of backlinks.

The more links you have back to your site from other sites, the stronger authority you have in the eyes of Google. It means that your content is relevant.

But not just any links will do the trick. That same study found that top-ranking sites with backlinks had links from hundreds of different sites:

And the vast majority of those links were from the highest-ranking authorities in their space:

Link building is tough, but it’s necessary to compete with SEO for online marketing.

Ranking higher with links involves everything from your total number of links to the quality of those links and the diversity of the sources.

When it comes to getting links, you need great content. The majority of content ranking #1 on Google is stellar.

And that’s why they have thousands of links. The content is nearly unmatched!

LinkedIn articles are much different than simply pasting your blog post into the status update bar.

These articles are published content that alerts all of your connections each time a new article goes live. That means that each person who follows you will get a notification rather than having to stumble across it while scrolling through a timeline.

My favorite strategy for LinkedIn articles is to copy the introduction paragraph of my latest blog post and end it with [click to continue reading…].

I then hyperlink that phrase back to my full blog post on my site, driving tons of traffic and engagement!

To get started with this off-page SEO tactic, head to LinkedIn and select “Write an article”:

Next, add your featured image from your blog post and copy and paste the headline and intro paragraph:

Add your “click to continue reading” tag at the end and watch your traffic and links skyrocket.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is the paid cousin of SEO.

Instead of optimizing your content and promoting it a lot to eventually show up as a top result for organic search engine results (which can often take a few months to happen even if you do it right), you can pay your way to the top.

And since it’s the first thing searchers see on the page, you’ll likely get a lot of hits to your site. But you also pay for each and every one.

Depending on what keyword you want to show up for, you pay different prices.

The keywords that people search a lot for are more competitive and are therefore more expensive.

Their ROI (return on investment) is often way higher than any stock or real estate investment could be, creating 5x, 10x, and even 20x the ad spend in conversions. That’s Internet marketing at it’s finest!

A great source to get started with Google AdWords, whether you’re an established business or a solo entrepreneur sitting on his couch, is Jerry Banfield.

Even better, Jerry teaches everything he knows, and most of his lessons are free. By far, the best place to start learning Google AdWords is his free course on YouTube.

It walks you through everything that you need to know to set up your first campaign from scratch, and it’s over 3 hours long.

The lessons in this video alone are more than enough to help you get started. And, once you’re ready to kick it up a notch, you can just get his Udemy course for over 9 hours of videos, detailed tutorials, and guides.

Content marketing

Jon Morrow is a master content crafter. After getting annoyed by how great content often suffers from little traffic and exposure, he set out to help people change that.

And, he did all of it with just the power of his voice. Jon is paralyzed from the neck down.

When he decided to make marketing strategy a key focus of his blog, he knew that sharing the lessons that he learned when building his blog and former businesses would attract a lot of readers.

But, he also knew that he could get even more fans and potential customers by teaching people how to implement the marketing strategy that he used to growth hack his companies to these huge revenues in such a short time.

Similar to Backlinko, he often breaks down a marketing tactic step-by-step with screenshots, results, and detailed how-tos.

Super specific instructions like this are rare in any industry. If you can take people by the hand from A to B, that’s when you’ll build a loyal following.

One way to learn what it takes to create awesome content is to just look at Jon’s writing.

For example, take a look at this intro.

In it, Jon coins an entirely new term that he introduces the reader to. He alienates the audience by addressing them as “them” even though every reader knows that Jon is talking to him or her personally.

Then, he explains his terms and compares a common blogger’s problem to a sickness. Anyone would want to know how to cure it! He creates a huge curiosity gap, and he immediately draws the reader in.

Another way to learn from him is by straight up reading his content about, well, creating content. Three good articles to start with are:

If you’re looking to start an SEO marketing strategy, you need to produce content. The only way that people will discover your company from organic search (from a non-branded search) is through content.

For example, if you are a law firm without a strong brand presence, you’ll need content that users are searching for to drive traffic.

You could publish an article on “Top 10 Things to Know When Getting in a Car Crash.” Blog content like this can drive inbound traffic to your website that you don’t have to pay for.

According to HubSpot, companies that post 16+ content pieces per month drive much more traffic than those that don’t:

Posting 16+ times per month not only drives traffic to your website, but it also increases the number of leads you get:

The more blog-based content you have, the more indexed pages on Google you have. Combine the two, and you have a lot of chances to get someone to visit your site:

Content marketing is the key to powerful SEO.

Sure, you can optimize your product pages and your homepage. But that won’t bring in traffic that doesn’t already know you.

Content marketing is the key to bringing in new visitors who haven’t heard of you!

Well, that answer is complicated. But the best way to summarize it is through a customer journey.

Let me explain:

When someone visits your site or interacts with your brand on social media for the first time, there is no chance that they will buy from you.

Why? Because they don’t know who you are!

Would you Google search for “shoes” and buy the first pair you saw? You probably wouldn’t.

Customers buy in a logical manner, following a specific journey from awareness to decisions. HubSpot calls this the buyer’s journey:

Customers move in progressive stages where they become aware of their problems, assess possible solutions, and then come to a decision.

This means that your content marketing efforts have to align with this journey. If you offer a user a lead magnet that requires them to give you information in the awareness stage, you’ll simply scare them off.

They don’t know your brand, so how can you expect them to give you information? You haven’t built the trust and credibility yet. The relationship isn’t there.

But if you ask for their information in the consideration stage, you’re right on track! They are brand aware and want high-value content.

Several million people follow his every move. If you watch him closely, you can learn the art of social media from him.

One of the biggest takeaways from Gary is that content follows context.

He says, “Content is king, but context is god.” What he means is that if you don’t respect the context of each individual social media platform, you’re bound to lose.

For example, I could have posted this blog post as a Facebook status update, but would that make any sense? No!

No one consumes long-form content on Facebook. That’s what blogs and YouTube are for.

Twitter’s video platform, Vine, was immensely popular for a time. But lots of people completely failed at building a big following on it because they were putting out the wrong content.

If you only have 6 seconds to capture the attention of your viewers, the feeling you try to excite in them had better be strong.

Only two kinds of accounts were able to pull that off consistently: Musicians and comedians.

Go through the list of the top Viners, and you’ll see that 99% of them were comedians making short, funny videos.

Instead of seeing social media as a distribution channel where you push out the content that you created on one platform to all of the others, try to tell stories that match the context of each platform.

Since Gary is also a speaker, you can learn a ton about social media by watching his talks on YouTube.

But Gary’s not the only social media wizard out there, so here are a few other resources to help you learn how to thrive on various social media platforms:

As consumer behavior changes and technology expands, trends will always be shifting.

Current trends show us that social media marketing is changing fast. While social platforms have always been amazing for organically reaching customers (and for free), that is slowly becoming less of a reality.

Pay-per-click advertising

Sounds similar to search engine marketing, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. But, while SEM is only one type of PPC advertising (and a very special one), many platforms offer to show your ads to their audiences with PPC, too.

Everything that you need to know about Google AdWords

In pay per click (PPC) advertising, Google AdWords is the most popular platform to conduct business on.

The net digital ad revenues of Google AdWords were nearly $30 billion in 2016, and they’re on track to grow to $45 billion in 2019.

Second to Google AdWords is Facebook, but they are still behind by a large margin.

So, why does Google AdWords dominate the PPC space? It’s simply because Google is, by far, the most popular search engine in the world:

Nothing else even comes close to the power and user base of Google.

That means that everyone wants to advertise on Google to capture these billions of users daily.

Advertising on other search networks can be great, but the user bases are much smaller, making it harder to reach your target market.

With that in mind, Google AdWords is one of the best places (if not the best place) to focus your PPC strategy on.

How does it work?

Google AdWords operates on a bidding-based system. For example, on the search network, you bid on different keywords against multiple other advertisers who are looking to rank first.

Keywords can cost anywhere from ~$1 to $500+ depending on your industry. Keywords will cost whatever advertisers are willing to pay for them.

For example, a keyword for a law firm might cost $100 per click because their end profit from a single case could be thousands of dollars. That means that they are willing to bid that high because their profits can justify it.

On the other hand, cheaper products will result in cheaper costs per click.

So, where can you advertise?

Google AdWords is made up of multiple different advertising options. Here I will detail them for you and explain what works best for most businesses:

Search network

The AdWords search network allows all advertisers to produce text-based ads targeting a specific keyword to show up in search results. For example, when you see results at the top of a search result marked “Ad,” that’s the search network:

The search network is one of the most powerful PPC advertising platforms the world has ever seen.

Why? It’s due to one single factor:

User intent.

Think about it this way:

On Facebook, people aren’t browsing their news feeds to see ads, right? They are on Facebook to engage with their friends and family and maybe to see some news on the side.

But the goal of it isn’t to find products or services. It’s social media. It’s about interaction.

But the search network on AdWords is a whole different animal. People are literally searching for things based on specific keywords to find solutions.

For example, think about a search for “plumber near me.” What does that keyword signify?

That user is trying to find plumbing services ASAP.

That’s intent to buy directly from a single search. Where platforms like Facebook can take multiple ads and remarketing campaigns to convert a prospect, the search network can convert someone from a single keyword search.

It’s one of the main reasons why people love advertising on Google’s search network.

Display network

The display network is another powerhouse of advertising that Google offers to every advertiser on their platform.

The display network taps into Google-approved sites, allowing advertisers to show image-based advertisements on related sites by topic and keyword context.

Read those posts, and you will be on your way to dominating Google AdWords and driving sales like you’ve never imagined.

Affiliate marketing

You can’t spell affiliate marketing without Pat Flynn. Well, you actually can, but you shouldn’t learn it without him.

When Pat created Smart Passive Income in 2008, he was just starting to get familiar with selling informational products online. His first product was Green Exam Academy. It’s a course that he created to help people pass the LEEDs exam for architects, and it sold well.

He wanted to learn more about the concept of passive income, which is where you earn money without actively working for it (after an insane amount of work up-front, of course).

Given his most recent income report, let’s just say he managed to learn quite a bit:

Affiliate marketing is his single biggest source of income.

But, what exactly is affiliate marketing?

Imagine that you know a great pizza place. You know the owner, Luigi, and you go there all the time.

Naturally, you tell your friends about it.

When your friend Tim goes to the pizza place, he mentions that you told him about the pizza parlor and proceeds to buy four pizzas for his friends.

The next time you come back, Luigi says, “Dude, your friend bought four pizzas because of you, and that’s the biggest order I had all week! Thanks, man! Here’s $5 for referring him.”

Ka-ching!

You’ve just made your first affiliate marketing sale.

Except, it doesn’t usually happen in real life like this, especially because a pizza place whose biggest order in a week is four pizzas won’t be around for very long.

But luckily for you, there’s a place where it happens all the time: Online.

Amazon is a prime example (pun intended).

When you sign up for their affiliate program, you can generate a special link for every single product page that they have.

You can then put that link on your blog, for example, or send it to friends who you want to recommend that product to. If they click your link and buy the product, you’ll get a small commission from Amazon for referring that customer.

Over the last seven years, Pat has built the best resource online about affiliate marketing. Some great starting points are:

A second popular trend for 2018 in the email marketing sector is segmentation. According to the latest data, segmentation can increase revenue from campaigns by 760%.

So, what exactly is segmentation?

Segmentation focuses on splitting up your customer email list into specific groups, allowing you to target them with much more specific content.

For example, let’s say that you have customers who have purchased basketball shoes and customers who have purchased soccer shoes.

Sending a generic email about a coupon likely won’t generate sales. But splitting those groups into two email lists and sending specific basketball and soccer shoe coupons will skyrocket engagement.

For example, look at this email from Bryan Harris who was looking to validate his online course. To do this, he segmented his email list for users who downloaded content that was similar to his online course:

This customized, segmented email blast generated a 72% reply rate.

Making email marketing as specific as possible is going to help you drive better open rates, response rates, and conversions.

Conclusion

Online marketing is the real deal. Of course, guys like Chandler are the exception. But thanks to the power of the Internet, anyone and everyone can become financially independent through Internet marketing.

You can ditch the boss, the nine to five, and the fear of losing your job.